


I Bargained for Salvation and they Gave me a Lethal Dose

by angelheadedhipster, hi_irashay, nitpickyabouttrains



Series: In a World of Steel-Eyed Death (and Men who are Fighting to be Warm) [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And probably an extra-strong teddy bear friend, And probably some painkillers, And probably some scotch, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Feelings Hour ft. the Avengers, Gen, Loki Needs a Hug, M/M, This is but an amuse bouche to prepare you all for our masterworks, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, groupwrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_irashay/pseuds/hi_irashay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitpickyabouttrains/pseuds/nitpickyabouttrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling is just like flying, except there's a more green and muscular landing destination.</p><p>Tony falls, Loki pretends, and Bruce remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Bargained for Salvation and they Gave me a Lethal Dose

**Author's Note:**

> The first of many snippets - one scene, three points of view - as we work on the longer project. Mainly we wanted an excuse to watch The Avengers 20,000 times. For, you know, inspiration. And science.

There was no more air left in the suit. There was no more air left anywhere, for that matter. A final flash of light, a flickering of a screen, and Iron Man went dark. Now it was just Tony himself, out in space. All around him was nothing but black. Darkness and cold and the inhospitable, never-ending wide open. Pale twinkling lights of far-off stars hovered in the distance, but they did nothing to penetrate the darkness. Useless.

Tony let his eyes flutter closed. There was nothing left now. He had taken the danger through the wormhole. His job was done. And he was tired.

Now he could rest. Finally.

As his lids overtook his vision, the dark lines of his lashes blinked in front of his eyes for just a second. And then there truly was only oblivion.

He fell.

 

++++++++

 

Loki had lain there for quite some time, he wasn't sure for how long. The Hulk had not disappointed with his strength, determination, and - Loki winced - meticulousness.

He slowly eased himself out of the crater he had inadvertently made, gently stretching his lithe body and cracking his joints with a satisfying pop. He walked to the gaping chasm where a window used to be, smirking with slight satisfaction at the memory of destroying the glass with Iron Man's body. No, no, it was Stark, actually, not Iron Man. Such a cocky man, Stark had taken a great risk betting on his suit arriving in time. Loki couldn't help but feel a grudging respect for Stark - he always had a soft spot for impulsivity.

Loki observed the battlefield that he and the Chitauri had made of New York City. He tried to feel pleasure at the sight of so much destruction, but he knew that his dominance was an illusion. At the end of the day, he was still a pawn in the grander game. Looking up, he was startled to see that the day may be ending sooner than he thought. Iron Man - of course it was him - was flying down through a rapidly-closing gateway. Wait, no, he wasn't flying... he was falling, gaining speed as he neared the Midgardian city.

In the blink of an eye the Hulk appeared, stopping Iron Man's descent with a surprisingly gentle catch. Their subsequent tumble to the ground was less than gentle, but it struck Loki the way the Hulk, supposedly such a mindless, raging beast, broke the fall and protected Iron Man.

How must it feel, to have people care that much about you? To risk life and limb, or at the very least aches and pains, in the Hulk's case, to save you? _Not that I'd need it,_ Loki scoffed to himself, rolling his eyes at his own train of thought. _Sentiment._

And yet... he could not shake the pang of longing in the pit of his chest. The same pang he constantly battled every time he saw Thor, or heard even a whisper of Asgard. He shook his head as he walked back towards the body-shaped crater, forcibly breaking his train of thought. _This will not do,_ Loki chided himself, _don't be a fool. There is work yet to be done._

He lay back down. He closed his eyes.

 

+++++++

 

It was a dream he'd had a few times before, and he recognized it for what it was. Not his own memory, the Other Guy's. A haze of green and rage, everything brighter but more simple, like a children's drawing.

_Noises, loud and clanging, big towers falling, shiny things rushing past his eyes. Enemies, destroy them, like the man in blue says. Crunches and gasps and bangs, the feeling of pain on his skin, sharpness against his eyes. Doing right, not hurting. Happy._

_And then the sky was black, a hole, the bad guys stopped, fell over. Out of the sky, falling, Tony, TONY, panic, waves of panic, PANIC, fear, doinggoingjump, higher, hit, fear, hurt, bang, stop fear sleeping nooooo-_

As usual, Bruce woke up when dream-Tony did, staring at the ceiling in his room in Stark Tower, breathing heavily, trying to soothe his heart and the gamma radiation in his blood, trying to stay himself.

Bruce sat up in the dark, running his hands through his hair, sweat on cold skin. He tried to breathe deeply, go back to sleep, but the back of his mind was racing, still, and just beneath the surface he could feel that green panic and fear, _Tony, TONY,_ and he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep without quieting it.

"JARVIS," said Bruce to the empty room.

There was a whirring noise - artificial, Bruce thought, put into the system to gently fool people into thinking JARVIS was just waking up, and help them forget that he was on all the time, monitoring, listening. Tony thought about things like that. "Doctor Banner?" said the computer.

"Could you pull up current biological readings on Tony Stark, please?"

"Of course," said JARVIS. There was a pause, almost a hesitation. "Visual display again, Doctor?"

"Please," said Bruce wearily. It was probably a bad sign that he'd had this nightmare often enough that the computer knew what to do with it, but now he was just thankful it was this easy. He'd tried just having JARVIS confirm that Tony was OK, and then tried data readouts, but the Big Guy wasn't much for data and numbers and words. His was a visual understanding of the world, and he needed to see him.

The white bedspread in front of him started to glow, and there was Tony, puttering around his lab, living, breathing, whole. In the times Bruce had done this he'd only actually found him sleeping once; usually he was in the lab, doing whatever it was he did in the middle of the night by himself. Once he'd found him with a mostly empty bottle of scotch and a broken expression, and had felt awful about interrupting, even though Tony never knew.

 _See?_ he felt like saying, to himself, even though he knew the link between him and Hulk didn't work like that. _He's fine. Still fine._ Instead he said "Thanks, JARVIS," and the display blinked back to bedspread, the room dark again.

Bruce felt his heart stop racing, the part of him that was green and rage fading, retreating back into his diseased blood and damaged cells, satisfied. For now. Until he had the dream again.

That pain, that rage, that fear, the absolute terror when he saw Tony falling, plummeting toward the sky. Bruce had never felt anything like it. It was a wave, a physical thing, crushing and exploding inside him. The Hulk's emotions were like hieroglyphics - stark and simple compared to the sentences and words Bruce Banner constructed, but layered, deep, each one standing for multiple meanings. Usually fear led to rage, attacks led to punches, offense to defense. This was different. This was fear for someone other than himself. This worry and anguish could not be beaten or attacked. The Hulk had never felt that before, and it scared him. This wasn't a dream, it was a cry, primal and deep rooted and unanswered. _This, this hurt. It hurt so much. Make it stop hurting._

Bruce understood, but he had done nothing. Yet.

There was a very real difference, he knew, between saying nothing, and saying no. As real as the difference between losing something, and never having it to begin with.


End file.
